Dozens of Sudanese women and children trapped in a Catholic church face starvation and bombardment by the country’s warring factions.
This is according to Father Jacob Thelekkadan, whose Dar Mariam mission Catholic church and school compound in Khartoum’s al-Shajara district, shelters around 80 people who are taking refuge from the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The roof of the main building has been damaged by shells, and parts of the nuns’ quarters have been set ablaze, according to the priest and seven other people at the mission.
Thelekkadan punched new holes in his belt as the supplies of food dwindled and he grew thinner as food has grown scarce.
Meanwhile, the nuns have boiled tree leaves for the children to eat and many of the adults have skipped meals.
A Red Cross effort to rescue them in December ended with two dead and seven others wounded, including three of the charity’s staff, after gunmen opened fire on the convoy, forcing it to turn back before it could reach the mission.
The warring sides traded blame for the attack.
Thelekkadan said he and the nuns had refused offers from the army to ferry them out across the river permanently, leaving the families behind. “When the road is safe, we will be the first to leave, but with the people,” said Thelekkadan, a 69-year-old Indian national.
Many of the inhabitants of Sudan’s capital fled after the conflict erupted in April last year, enveloping Khartoum and its sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman along the Nile, and quickly spreading to other parts of the country.
At the start of the war, the RSF occupied strategic sites and residential neighbourhoods in Khartoum, positioning snipers on high-rise buildings. The army, lacking effective ground forces, responded with heavy artillery and air strikes.
The Dar Mariam mission became a safe haven for those lacking the money to flee or without anywhere to go.
Photos shared with Reuters by Thelekkadan show parts of the mission’s buildings littered with debris, walls heavily damaged by bullets or shelling, and rooms and corridors blackened by smoke. “Our food situation became very bad,” said Thelekkadan. “We’re all very weak.”
Extreme hunger has spread across Sudan in areas worst affected by the conflict, prompting famine warnings for areas including in Khartoum.
Some families took shelter at the mission in June last year, hoping for protection from its concrete roof. But the area soon became cut off as the RSF pressed to capture the strategic Armoured Corps camp about 2 km away, one of several military bases it was targeting, Thelekkadan said.
Al-Shajara district has come under heavy attack by the RSF. Those living nearby with the money to do so have registered with the military to be taken across the Nile; some have been waiting for months.
But a nighttime evacuation by boat across the White Nile is considered too risky for the children at the mission, Thelekkadan said.
Sudan’s war has created the world’s biggest internal displacement crisis and has driven nearly 10 million people to seek shelter inside or outside the country, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Reuters has documented how the fighting has triggered ethnically-charged killings in the western region of Darfur and led to the spread of deadly hunger.
